Jason Furman to Deliver Winter Lecture on Feb. 26

Jason Furman, the Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy jointly at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Department of Economics at Harvard University, will deliver the 2023–2024 Judge Ralph K. Winter Lecture on Feb. 26.

Furman will give his lecture, titled “Clear Thinking About Economic Policy: Overcoming the Liberal and Conservative Vices,” from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. in Room 127 of the Sterling Law Building.

The lecture is open to the Yale community. To attend, please register in advance.

A leading economist and public servant, Furman engages in public policy through research, writing, and teaching in a wide range of areas, which span U.S. and international macroeconomics, fiscal policy, labor markets, and competition policy. In addition to his appointments at Harvard, Furman is nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Furman has held a number of senior policy positions in Washington, D.C., including as a top economic adviser to President Barack Obama. From August 2013 to January 2017, he served as the 28th Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, acting as both President Obama’s chief economist and a member of the Cabinet. Furman played a pivotal role in most of the Obama Administration’s major economic policies. He also served under President Bill Clinton ’73.

Furman is a member of numerous organizations, which include the Council on Foreign Relations, the Group of Thirty, and the Economic Strategy Group. He also serves as a Trustee of the Russell Sage Foundation and on the advisory boards for the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, the Bund Summit, the Hamilton Project, and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

In addition to scholarly articles, Furman contributes regularly to The Wall Street Journal and Project Syndicate. He has edited two books on economic policy. Furman earned a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Harvard University, as well as an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics.

Ralph K. Winter Jr. ’60 was a Senior Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit. He served as the William K. Townsend Professor of Law at Yale Law School when appointed to the bench in 1982 and continued to teach at the Law School part-time until 2014.

Winter received the 2017 Edward J. Devitt Distinguished Service to Justice Award, which honors an Article III judge who has achieved a distinguished career and made significant contributions to the administration of justice, the advancement of the rule of law, and the improvement of society as a whole. Recipients are chosen by a committee of federal judges consisting of a Supreme Court Justice, an appellate court judge, and a district court judge.

To commemorate the extraordinary influence of Judge Winter as a corporate law scholar and his distinguished career as a jurist, former law clerks and students established The Judge Ralph K. Winter Lectureship on Corporate Law and Governance, under the auspices of the Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law. The inaugural lecture took place in the fall of 2005.